Manuel Canuto Restrepo, Obispo de Pasto (1870-1881) Su Visión Sobre el Clero y el Liberalismo en Colombia: El Cordero y el Lobo

Abstract

Bishop Manuel Canuto Restrepo y Villegas (1825-1891), governed the diocese of Pasto during the nineteen-seventies, a boom period of the radical liberal political project, characterized by the historiography of progressive, typical of a time of Transformations and independence, influenced by the current of thought called liberalism, which sought a modernized society, but which saw in the Catholic Church as its main contradictor. The prelate Restrepo, with a rigorous theological formation, a belligerent and hospitable attitude by a Ptolemaic people traditionally submissive to the clergy’s plans, enabled him to develop his fanatical missionary work with greater autonomy, to the point of becoming the most connotated and incendiary ideologue Of the Church for its attacks on liberalism and secular education in the United States of Colombia. From the clandestinity of his exile, he writes a work titled, The Clergy and Liberalism in Colombia, which is the subject of analysis for the present work, in which he expounds his political thought on the separation of Church and State, emphasizes the contribution of the clergy to Republic in the conformation of its nationality, questions political parties, condemns contemporary evils such as liberalism, Protestantism and communism, analyzes some articles of the Constitution of 1863, blames the liberals as promoters of civil wars in Colombia, asserts The unconstitutionality of the exile and ends up victimizing the clergy.